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Who Visits Us When We Sleep?

by Kazuko Ishigaki

Trinity Books · November 2, 2026

A quiet, poetic year of night stories for anyone who has dreamed of someone they lost.

Reading time: About 3 h 0 min (at 230 words a minute)

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Details

AuthorJapan Kazuko Ishigaki
CategoryDream reading / Sleep / Myths retold / Folklore studies
Language of the bookEnglish
PublishedNovember 2, 2026
Length200 pages
Product numberTB-W0016-EN
Reading timeAbout 3 h 0 min (at 230 words a minute)
Print-ready PDFA5 · interior PDF and cover PDF (with 3 mm bleed) · 200 pages

Categories of this book

CategoriesDaily life and practical skillsDream reading

CategoriesHealth and bodySleep

CategoriesLearning and general knowledgeMyths retold

CategoriesLearning and general knowledgeFolklore studies

About this book

"She was here," he said. "In the workshop. She was fixing the blue radio, and she told me to pass the small screwdriver." On sixteen nights of the year after their grandmother's death, a young woman tells her brother one old story about the dead who come back in dreams, side by side with what sleep science knows about such dreams.

Sixteen nights, sixteen old stories, and one year of missing someone.

After their grandmother dies in early spring, a young woman and her teenage brother spend a year in her old house, among the clocks, radios and bicycles she used to repair. On sixteen nights of that year, one of them wakes from a dream of her, or hopes for one, or is afraid of one, and the older sister tells one story that night.

The stories come from the oldest books people have kept: a hero reaching for his lost friend in his sleep, a grandfather showing a young soldier the earth from the stars, a father calling his son away from a lonely shore, a monk who meets a ghost on a journey, a father who sees his little daughter across a river. Beside each story stands what sleep science knows today, told plainly and calmly.

Every night brings one small thing to try before sleep or on waking. At the back of the book you will find a short quiz, the people of the book, all the things to try in one place, and the questions readers often ask.

What these sixteen nights leave with you

  • Sixteen old stories, from many times and regions, about the dead who return in dreams
  • A clear picture of how sleep and dreaming work, from REM and non-REM sleep to dream recall
  • Calm ways to meet a frightening dream, a dream of someone you miss, or a night without dreams
  • Small exercises for the evening and the morning, gathered at the back of the book

Contents

  • Who Visits Us When We Sleep?
  • The Questions in This Book
  • Did Someone You Miss Visit You Last Night?
    1. My brother was sitting on the stairs at two.
    2. The house still kept her timetables on the wall.
    3. My shift at the bakery started at four.
    4. Tonight's Story
    5. The friend in the dream looked exactly like himself.
    6. A dream borrows from everything we have stored.
    7. Many people meet the dead in their sleep.
    8. Something to Try Tonight
    9. I made my brother a promise about the nights.
    10. The workshop clocks waited for someone to wind them.
  • Are Dreams of the Dead Rare?
    1. Most people think these dreams are rare.
    2. Our mother told her dream over the strawberries.
    3. My brother's friend had dreamed of her father for years.
    4. Most dreams leave before we can catch them.
    5. The silence around these dreams is a habit, not a rule.
    6. Tonight's Story
    7. The tale is gentler than it first sounds.
    8. Comfort is the most common thing people report.
    9. The house sounded different with four voices in it.
    10. Something to Try Tonight
  • Do We Dream in Only One Kind of Sleep?
    1. People often say that dreams belong to only one kind of sleep.
    2. My brother fell asleep over his homework in the rain.
    3. Something to Try Tonight
    4. A night of sleep runs like a stopping train.
    5. The quiet stations have their own dreams.
    6. The rain kept the workshop smelling of oil and dust.
    7. Tonight's Story
    8. The same old book has a man drumming at a funeral.
    9. The skull's freedom belongs to the dead, not to us.
    10. My brother asked a question I could not answer.
More
  • Does a Dream Last Only a Second?
    1. Many people believe that a long dream lasts only a moment.
    2. My brother rode the night bus all the way to the sea.
    3. Tonight's Story
    4. Scipio thought the dream came from the talk at supper.
    5. The grandfather in the dream sent the young man back to his life.
    6. Some sleepers can send a signal from inside a dream.
    7. Not every part of a dream keeps steady time.
    8. A dream keeps time more like a clock than a flash.
    9. Something to Try Tonight
    10. The first warm night came in through the window.
  • Do the Dead Come Only to Warn Us?
    1. Many people believe the dead come back only to warn us.
    2. The first hot night of summer kept the whole house awake.
    3. Tonight's Story
    4. Long ago this story was told as part of an argument.
    5. Most dreams of the dead arrive with no message at all.
    6. My own dreams of her had been just as ordinary.
    7. Our grandmother said "wait" more than any other word.
    8. The bees next door were fanning the heat out of their hives.
    9. A ferry timetable was still pinned above her workbench.
    10. Something to Try Tonight
  • Does a Dream Come From Outside Us?
    1. Many people believe a dream is sent to us from somewhere else.
    2. The lanterns went down the river one by one after dark.
    3. My brother's friend set a lantern on the water for her father.
    4. In the oldest stories the dream stands at the head of the bed.
    5. Tonight's Story
    6. We climbed up to the bridge where she always stood.
    7. The sleeping brain builds its visitors from the inside.
    8. A dream made inside us can still belong to her.
    9. Something to Try Tonight
    10. Our mother kept the last lantern on the kitchen table.
    11. The house was full of small sounds when we came home.
  • Why Does She Look Younger in My Dreams?
    1. Many people believe a dream plays back a memory like a recording.
    2. The last week of summer smelled of hot bread and dust.
    3. Tonight's Story
    4. Genji's father came to him looking just as he had in life.
    5. A dream is put together from old parts like a rebuilt bicycle.
    6. Our mother sees a different age of her in her dreams.
    7. The photo albums were kept in the bottom drawer of her desk.
    8. My brother found the red bicycle in a photograph.
    9. Something to Try Tonight
    10. The clock repairer remembered her when she was forty.
    11. We left the albums open on the kitchen table overnight.
  • If I Don't Remember a Dream, Did I Dream at All?
    1. Many people believe that some of us never dream at all.
    2. My brother said he had stopped dreaming of her.
    3. A dream fades on waking like a station seen from a fast train.
    4. My early alarm sometimes catches a dream in the middle.
    5. Old plays written in Japanese are built around a single dream.
    6. Tonight's Story
    7. In many of these plays the traveler wakes alone at dawn.
    8. My brother's friend asked to hear the story again.
    9. Her repair records had a few dreams written at the back.
    10. We bought two notebooks at the shop by the bus station.
    11. Something to Try Tonight
  • Why Was Last Night's Dream So Frightening?
    1. Many people believe a dark dream of the dead is a warning.
    2. The storm reached the house an hour before my alarm.
    3. Tonight's Story
    4. The dust in my brother's dream came from our own house.
    5. A frightening dream shows how heavy the load is.
    6. Something to Try Tonight
    7. My brother went back to bed before the rain stopped.
    8. The bakery was warm and full of ordinary noise.
    9. Gilgamesh came home with nothing but the walls of his city.
    10. We swept the workshop floor that same afternoon.
  • Can You Know You Are Dreaming?
    1. Many people think lucid dreaming is a rare gift.
    2. My brother woke up knowing he had been dreaming.
    3. The workshop clock had no numbers on its face.
    4. Sleep laboratories have watched dreamers signal with their eyes.
    5. Something to Try Tonight
    6. My brother's friend asked whether she could choose a dream.
    7. Tonight's Story
    8. The old question turns gently in both directions.
    9. Waking up is also a kind of arrival.
    10. The friend came back the next weekend with a coat.
  • Who Was Sitting at the End of My Bed?
    1. Many people believe the night visitor is a spirit.
    2. I woke one afternoon and could not move my hands.
    3. The coat on the bedpost was only a coat.
    4. Our mother booked the appointment from the train.
    5. The doctor drew two circles on a card.
    6. Tonight's Story
    7. People everywhere gave the same feeling a face.
    8. The visitor I felt was not my grandmother, and that was all right.
    9. My brother laughed when I told him about the coat.
    10. Something to Try Tonight
  • Does Grief Move in Steps, Like Stations on a Line?
    1. Many people think grief runs along a fixed line of stations.
    2. The winter timetable went up at the bus stop.
    3. I thought I had gone back three stations.
    4. Tonight's Story
    5. Augustine was careful about what a dream could prove.
    6. Grief arrives in waves, the way a ferry rolls in a swell.
    7. My dreams of her had changed with the months.
    8. Something to Try Tonight
    9. Our cousin called on Sunday with news of the baby.
    10. The clock repairer brought back one of her unfinished clocks.
  • Do People Everywhere Treat These Dreams the Same Way?
    1. The longest night of the year began before five o'clock.
    2. My brother's friend had never told her mother her dreams.
    3. The neighbor sets out a cup of tea for her visitor.
    4. Tonight's Story
    5. A saga from the cold north tells it another way.
    6. The two stories run on very different lines.
    7. Our mother remembered whose habit it was.
    8. My brother asked what she would send us to do.
    9. The longest night is the hinge of the year.
    10. Something to Try Tonight
  • Must We Stop Dreaming of Them to Heal?
    1. Snow closed the road down to the ferry.
    2. My brother thought he had gone backwards.
    3. A bond is not a rope that has to be cut.
    4. My brother's friend has dreamed of her father for years.
    5. Tonight's Story
    6. The father wanted to cross the river.
    7. The poem does not ask him to forget.
    8. Something to Try Tonight
    9. The clock repairer was clearing snow at midnight.
  • What Do We Say When We Wake?
    1. The dream came on a night when the ice began to thaw.
    2. I carried the dream through a whole shift without saying a word.
    3. Tonight's Story
    4. Old mornings had their own rules for telling dreams.
    5. My brother wanted to know what my dream meant.
    6. Our mother had been carrying a dream of her own.
    7. Something to Try Tonight
    8. Not every winter night was as gentle as this one.
    9. The key to the clocks stayed in its drawer a little longer.
    10. The ice let go of the gutters before morning.
  • Will She Still Come When the Year Is Over?
    1. The baby slept through the opening of the workshop.
    2. We wound the clocks one by one.
    3. The band played one song in the garage before supper.
    4. The neighbor told her bees about the baby.
    5. My brother has found a job for the summer.
    6. Something to Try Tonight
    7. My brother asked whether she would still come.
    8. Tonight's Story
    9. The clocks kept ticking after everyone was asleep.
  • After the Year
  • A Short Quiz
  • The People in This Book
  • All the Things to Try
  • Questions Readers Often Ask
  • Colophon

From the publisher

A quiet, poetic year of night stories for anyone who has dreamed of someone they lost.

This book sets a grieving family's real nights beside the stories people have told about such dreams for thousands of years, and lets science explain, calmly and plainly, why these dreams feel so close and so real. The old readings of dreams are enjoyed as stories, and the comfort they hold is left for the reader to find.

The voice is clear and unhurried, full of small images of ticking clocks, night buses, ferries and timetables. Each chapter is one night, so the book can be read slowly, a chapter before sleep, through a whole year of seasons.

What we like

  • Sixteen chapters, one night and one old story each, following one year from spring to spring
  • Old tales and poems from many regions, retold in plain words
  • What sleep science knows about dreams of the dead, explained without fear
  • One small, calm thing to try each night, all collected at the back
  • A quiz, the people of the book and common questions with their answers

Recommended for

  • Young readers who have lost someone and still meet them in dreams
  • Anyone who loves old stories, dreams and the quiet hours of the night

If bad dreams come back night after night, or if sleep troubles go on for weeks and weigh on your days, please talk to a doctor.

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